Disastrous Birthday Cake :P

I met my best gal friend, BK at Plaza Singapura, Tea Cosy for her belated birthday dinner. Tea Cosy is a mixed retail and dining outlet selling vintage classic furniture and ornaments. It's a nice, cosy place for high tea sessions or lunch/dinner gathering. We had dinner on that day and the food was quite average, in our opinions. Their high tea set looks more appealing so I migh be going back for their cupcakes and scones another day.

Ok...what is happening to the birthday cake that I baked for BK? Hehe.. as you can see from the photo, one side of it sank and the entire cake kinda swayed to one side, as if an earthquake had caused a landscape to be destroyed... or shall I say it's like ice caps melting? Yes I think that should be a better description... because that was exactly what happened. The Mousse cake melted.

My plan was intially to bake a chocolate layer cake. But BK told me that she had a bad cough. So I thought i had better not bake a chocolate layer cake that would most probably have made her cough even worse. Without insufficient time to get other ingredients, I decided on a green tea mousse cake.

I took this picture of the cake baking in the oven because I knew I had overbeaten the egg whites so I was monitoring whether the cake was baking well in the oven. It looked fine even until it was out of the oven but..... as with most chiffon cakes, some only sank when you overturn the cake to cool; some will not sink until you unmould the cake. I think this has got to do with the stability of the beaten egg whites. Some could still managed to "endure" without collasping in the oven but eventually they had to, while some were too weak that they couldn't hold one more minute inside the oven. I was hoping my over-beating could still sustain the stability..... So what was the result?

Well, I have some extra batter so I poured some in another small chiffon tin. The ones in the chiffon tin collasped badly, still eatable but as you know, it becomes moist and kueh-like. The other one in the round tin shrank a little, but still looked perfect. Although it wasn't the best texture that it should be, it still looked and tasted good. :)

I then got myself going with the green tea mousse. The recipe was taken from Florence's matcha yoghurt mousse cake. I have not had much good experience with making mousse cakes, so i do not know whether it should be the correct texture or not. The green tea flavour and colour wasn't that distinctive also because the powder could not dissolve well in the mixture. :(

My only decorating ingredients revolves around strawberries and chocolate. I know its very boring. Hehe... anyway, strawberry is a versatile ingredient isn't it? sorry my dearies, till when I'd improve my decorating skills, you'll still be seeing strawberries :P

When I reached Tea Cosy, I immediately asked for the mousse cake to be kept in their fridge as I knew the mousse cake was already melting. When we were finishing our dinner, the chef/waiter came to us telling us that the cake had melted badly because I should have told them that it was a mousse cake and it should be kept in the freezer instead. We told them that's fine and we would just like to have the cake served to us. They gave us a socking look with their eyes wide open" Are you sure? Its going to look quite bad."

So they took out the cake, placed a candle and even had it lighted up! Haha we weren't really expecting this, really. We thought we would just have a little photograph and enjoy the cake to ourselves without making a "scene" about the birthday cake. It was no wonder why they had to make sure whether we really wanna have our cake served. :P

Anyway, we do not really mind whether eyes were on the weird-looking cake. It tasted quite delicious actually. Because of the use of yoghurt, it was a rather refreshing, mousse cake rather than a creamy one. ;)

Honey Cornflakes

I took an entire week of my vacation leave for my Phuket trip. Following my return back, I simply rest and relax at home, rotting, surfing the internet and of cos' baking. Life's ought to be like this. You can't be working like a machine 365 days. You'll hate your job even more (unless your work is your passion but hardly do we fulfill that, do we?). After a break, recharged, and set the engine to work hard again! Hopefully I'll be able to recharge back to full power at the soonest. ;)

One entire day was spent baking a birthday cake for my best girl friend for a belated birthday celebration for her. It was one of the worst birthday cake I've made but we had fun laughing and eating it :P (More to be shared!)

On another day, I wanted to bake something yet not too tedious. I chosed this simplest of all - honey cornflake cups. I bought a packet of cornflakes during Chinese New Year to make chocolate cornflakes and kept the leftovers as breakfast cereals but I hardly consume it as I've shifted my preference for wheat cereals instead. So I thought making this is the best way to utilise it. ;)

I didn't managed to coat all with the honey-sugar syrup so it deosn't stick well but I think that's fine. It would not be overly sweet then and you can just pick at any loose cereal flakes from the mini muffin cup case. I randomly googled for this recipe and found one that suits me! It's here. Thanks Jussaemon for this easy and good recipe. :D

Sweet proposal @ Phuket :P

Updates: I've uploaded this photo cos' dd said he preferred this photo much more than the below one. ;)

I'm just back from a short trip to Phuket with my dd. It was a really relaxing trip.... beautiful beaches, pretty ladies clad in bikini and beach wears, men going topless walking along the streets of Patong Beach. It's the only place I don't have to worry about my image and can be as casual as I want. Haha... I just wish i wasn't back so early! :D

Best of all, my boyfriend, proposed to me. :P

Well, it wasn't as if i'm not expecting his proposal. Afterall, we have already make a booking for our future birdnest. *smile* Still, I can't take things for granted until he makes the first move right? Hehe...

This proposal really came as a surprise because he has been giving me the not prepared attitude. Haa, I thought that he hasn't made any preparation for our future yet. I didn't expect he would bring a ring all the way from Singapore cos' he'd always a cautious person and would never bring valuables overseas.

So, yeah, I accepted his proposal. :) I shan't go much into the details... *shy shy*..... only that after I accepted it, i remembered that my dream proposal has to come with a bouquet of flowers! :P Haha.... nevermind, dd, you promised you will make up for it. ;)

I'll share more of my phuket trip soon! I still need some time to get myself back on track... ;)

Banana Muffin - Mark this recipe!

I have some very ripe bananas and..... I'm sure this has been repeated by many and I don't have to repeat myself. ;) Over-ripe bananas are definitely every baking-enthusiast's best friend. So here you are, banana muffins. This banana muffin is so good that i think I've really found a treasure. Most banana muffins never come out of the oven a failure but this recipe is just simply perfect, texture, taste, shape and appearance and level of difficulty. That's why my purpose here is to share and make a note in case I forget. Thanks Little Teochew for sharing this!

Do hop over to The Little Teochew for the recipe!

I'll end this post here because i'm so so busy nowadays! On a positive note, isn't that good because judging from my workload, I'll remain employed for at least for the next 2 years!?! :D My colleague must be amazed that I said this... haa but i think positive thinking is what we should do, and I learnt that facing difficult times and cases actually make you learn more. ;)